Ayuttaya, Thailand

After the previous post we took a tuk tuk to Chiang Mai’s train station and stocked up with bottled water, crisps and generous slices of banana cake which was only 10 baht! We got there early and found some seats to sit down on and were shortly joined by a couple from South Africa who were catching the same train as us. They had travelled from Singapore, up through Malaysia to Thailand, and told us about the lovely beaches and diving in the south.

As the time came for our train, we walked down the platform to where the sleeper carriages would be (the trains are very long) and sat down next to an American couple travelling with a young child. It was beginning to get quite cold by this point and the train still hadn’t turned up, and then there was an annoucement that the train was delayed and wouldn’t get in until after midnight. Somehow we chatted and waited for another three hours until the train eventually did turn up and they attached the sleeper cars.

Instead of getting to Ayuttaya mid morning, we didn’t arrive until early afternoon. At the station we were constantly hastled by tuk tuk drivers wanted to charge huge amounts to drive us around the temples. Instead we followed a map walked a km or so to Wat Yai Chaya Mongkol. It was so hot and Ayuttaya felt like just another modern city with ancient temples hidden away, around the edge of the old capital. The parts we saw were cleaner than Bangkok, busy and not particularly pretty.

The temple was interesting. Built in 1593, it was huge and well kept. I climbed to the top level of the main tower and looked down on rows of Buddahs and other temples. There seemed to be lots of local people who lived on the edge of the park and maintained the grounds. The temples were covered in pretty, blue butterflies.

In the evening we ate at noodle stands alongside the station and I even found a stall with cakes and tried some tasty coconut bread pastries. We took a train back to Bangkok and stayed at the SV Guesthouse in Sukhumvit. The area was a lot nicer, but more expensive and was filled with big tourist hotels and shopping malls.